thanks to edward snowden, we now know the nsa monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders. that includes merkel, who is object sensibly a u.s. ally. merkel was reportedly livid about the surveillance and called president obama to register her displeasure. but the spying may have begun as far back as 2002, the early days of the bush administration, before merkel even became chancellor. and that timeline makes this clip from 2006 even creepier! i can't help but wonder if bush had gotten a tip from the nsa about how merkel mentioned on the phone she enjoyed the occasional back rub. here's the craziest part about this whole thing, it's not that we were tapping the german chancellor's phones, which is not necessarily that surprising, even though it involved an ally, it is that, apparently, president obama did not know we were doing it, according to a report from the "wall street journal" out today. the spying on merkel was part of the massive surveillance operation put in place by president george w. bush after the september 11th attacks, which members of the bush administration